Events

Dozens Of Rabbits Up For Adoption After Animal Cruelty Investigation

A rabbit rescued from Six Bells Farm is being cared for at the Foothills Animal Shelter in Golden. (credit: CBS)

GOLDEN, Colo. (CBS4)- Two hundred rabbits that were rescued during an animal cruelty investigation are available for adoption.

At the Foothills Animal Shelter in Golden, just 30 of the 200 rabbits are available. More will be available at a later date.

The rabbits were made available after a judge denied an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent the distribution of the seized animals.

The rabbits were rescued on July 21 from Six Bells Farm in Jefferson County. Deputies said the animals didn’t have food or water, had matted hair and were kept in cages that appeared to have not been cleaned in weeks.

The owner, Debbie Bell, is facing 25 counts of animal cruelty. She asked the judge to keep the rabbits from being adopted out, but the judge denied her request.

One Comment

I wonder if this is legal, since this case hasn’t yet been tried there is lots of controversy regarding what the condition of these animals were at the time they were confiscated. Taxpayers may be picking up a big bill for the mistakes made by with this case.

12 pictures out of 200? You don’t know the facts! Most of this is how rabbits behave. They pile their fecies and they also like to go in their water. Secondly rabbits actually feed their poop to their babies. I agree the pictures look bad but I don’t think it represents the entire farm.
Regardless, if 12 pictures is all they have they could have asked her to fix the issues and not just seize her property. That is the big point here… There is a difference between cruelty and filthy animals. Rabbits are filthy by nature.

“Two hundred rabbits that were rescued during an animal cruelty investigation are available for adoption”.
Sounds like illegal search and seizure to me. If there is an investigation why is the property being given away?

Also I’ve followed this story and all of these rabbits were not in danger. Why did they not as the farm to fix the infractions instead of just taking all the animals and storing them at the tax payers expense?
And Lastly these rabbits are not pet rabbits, they are farmed to feed animals at the zoo. They shouldn’t be given away for adoption as pets.